Market Watch - Processors

The processor market has seen quite a bit of action over the past few months and there is more expected in the months to come. The PC market, in general has been suffering under the weight of the ever expanding tablet and smartphone market. The demand for faster hardware by games isn’t increasing by a lot, considering many games in the market today are console ports. Still, there are many using the older hardware that need to be upgraded to newer hardware and they invariably have to buy new processors. There’s a lot happening in this space and there have been some price fluctuations with new models being launched by the two manufacturers - AMD and Intel.

We scoured the market to find some of the prices for the most popularly sold processors. We also spoke to the shopkeepers to get an idea of which processors were being sold more, than the rest.

From what the shopkeepers told us, customers tend to prefer Intel to AMD, not to say that AMD doesn’t do any business. We’ve also noticed this in the reports given out by research agencies around the world. Intel has a clear lead, but AMD is known in the market for its value offerings. Still, the best selling processors in the Indian market seem to be not the latest Sandy Bridge processors, but the older Core 2 Duo line, specifically the Core 2 Duo E5700, which was one of the mainstream processors a few years back. Of the newer processors, the Core i3 540 and the Core i3 2100 are very popular.

The newer Core i3 2100 is one of the cheapest processors from Intel and is based on the Sandy Bridge architecture. PC hardware vendors are pushing for these more than they are for the previous generation of Intel processors, such as the Core i3 540. That processor was based on the LGA 1156 socket, as compared to the LGA 1155 socket used on the newer Sandy Bridge processors.The customers who buy these processors need it for mainstream PCs and not for any intensive workloads.

When it comes to gaming and graphics artists, there’s a clear shift in priorities. It appears that Intel has a lead, with these customers preferring to opt for Core i7 processors for these rigs. The Core i7 line of processors usually come with faster core speeds and more cores in some cases. These offer a lot more performance, than their affordable counterparts, so they’re much in demand when it comes to high-end gaming rig builders. It doesn't look like the Sandy Bridge-E line of processors have picked up popularity, since very few users opt for it.

There's a lot that'll change in the months to come as well. Intel is expected to launch their Ivy Bridge line of processors very soon and prices of existing processors are likely to drop. High-end system builders should probably wait for a while.